Opinion

JAMES VELASQUEZ: Taking a step toward leaving behind NCLB

On Thursday, the Every Child Achieves Act of 2015 passed unanimously through a vital U.S. Senate committee vote, setting it up for a reading before the entire body. The bill would amend and reauthorize the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and represents an innovation from the standards it would amend and replace – what we know as No Child Left Behind.

Not least of its beneficial changes is in the name – “No child left behind” has a militant sort of rigidity to it, while “every child achieves” is more comfortably nebulous. Which is, admittedly, where government prefers to be.

For example, last year, when NCLB was supposed to have guaranteed American kids would achieve 100 percent proficiency in all subjects across all grade levels, the National Assessment of Educational Progress found proficiency below 50 percent for every racial and ethnic group except for Asians (who didn’t come near 100 percent) and, in fourth-grade math, whites.

But “achievement”? That could mean anything.

Still, maybe that’s for the better. What education policy needs, above all, is fewer idealistic planners in D.C. and more practical improvements made by local, on-the-ground players – in and out of government.

Which gives us the banner items in the ECAA: First, it puts an end to federal, test-based accountability standards – the ones from which most every state and school district has sought a waiver. Testing is still required, but would be utilized by state-crafted accountability measures that, so long as they meet basic guidelines, the feds are prohibited from turning down.

Secondly, the ECAA would improve rules around teacher hiring and staffing practices. It removes an old provision for “highly qualified” teachers that required a specific certification and accreditation process, stopping schools from hiring according to talent in the classroom. The bill also cuts back on some mandated teacher evaluation practices, leaving the matter to states.

What these items have in common: Localizing control, adding elements of dynamism and competition to the market for teaching, testing and accountability.

It’s not all positive, though. The bill is bipartisan, introduced by Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Patty Murray, D-Wash. As a result, sacrificed to the altar of compromise is flexibility for Title I funds.

Title I of the ESEA contains the lion’s share, over $14 billion, of the bill’s programs and appropriations, and distribution is connected to a federal formula that aspires to allocate funds according to need.

Those in favor of more local control have argued, with credibility, that these funds might be better utilized if states got them via block grant or assigned per pupil. It is unfortunate to see that the idea did not even make it to the Senate floor.

Still, Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., presented, then withdrew, an amendment during committee to introduce portability – possibly waiting for the bill to appear on the floor. So the argument may resurface.

There are also signs of mission creep: The ECAA contains funding for early childhood education programs – somewhat out-of-place for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

In all, projections for the ESEA budget this year come in around $22 billion to $25 billion – a significant portion of the federal government’s spending in education. The Department of Education itself has an appropriated budget of just short of $70 billion.

But in all, the federal government allocates only about 10 percent of all funds put toward education. Enough to have a voice, certainly, but should it be enough to run the whole show?

It doesn’t seem like it. The current mold of education – district-based attendance, government-regulated curriculums, entrenched teachers unions and all the rest – is woefully static and, frankly, a bit 20th century.

The ECAA is positive in so much as it localizes control, and its largest reforms seem to move in that direction. But over the next 10 or 20 years, we should expect this to go further: Breaking up school districts, introducing more competition into teaching, tests and courses, placing ultimate accountability into the hands of parents and increasing the flexibility with which states, cities and families deploy their funds.

If we are to give the ECAA a pass, it should be a first step of many in shaking off an old and ineffective system.

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